Jeremy Irons

Actor Jeremy Irons attends the 40th Anniversary Chaplin Award Gala honoring Barbra Streisand, held by the Film Society of Lincoln Center, April 22, 2013 in New York City.

From his breakout roles in "The French Lieutenant's Woman" and the U.K. miniseries "Brideshead Revisited," Irons has been in more than 40 movies, at least as many plays, and has won just about every acting award" the Academy Award, the Tony, the Emmy, the Golden Globe and the SAG Awards. "I've been very lucky," he said.

By CBSNews.com senior editor David Morgan

Credit: Michael Loccisano/Getty Images

In 1981 Jeremy Irons starred with Anthony Andrews, Diana Quick, Claire Bloom, Laurence Olivier, John Gielgud and Simon Jones in the TV miniseries "Brideshead Revisited," based on the novel by Evelyn Waugh. The series was an international hit.

Irons' first major film role was opposite Meryl Streep in the film version of John Fowles' "The French Lieutenant's Woman" (1981), directed by Karel Reisz.

The novel's tricky narrative and multiple endings were creatively adapted by Harold Pinter to a story of a film crew shooting a period romance, with the drama intercut between fiction and "reality."

Credit: United Artists

In Jerzy Skolimowski's "Moonlighting" (1982), Jeremy Irons plays a Polish builder working on a project in London, as the Solidarity labor movement faces crushing oppression in his homeland.

Credit: Miracle Films

Jeremy Irons is an 18th century Jesuit missionary in South America, and Robert De Niro plays a mercenary and slave trader seeking penance, in Roland Jaffe's "The Mission" (1986).

Credit: Warner Brothers

In the first of his collaborations with Canadian director David Cronenberg, "Dead Ringers" (1988), Jeremy Irons plays identical twin gynecologists, in a psycho-sexual drama featuring Genevieve Bujold.

Credit: 20th Century Fox

Based on Roald Dahl's book, ""Danny, the Champion of the World" (1989) starred Jeremy Irons and his son, Sam Irons.

Credit: Disney Channel

For 1990's "Reversal of Fortune," Jeremy Irons was cast as socialite Claus von Bulow, accused of trying to kill his rich wife, Sonny von Bulow, by giving her an overdose of insulin.

Irons told CBS News' Tracy Smith that he was "slightly embarrassed" at the prospect of playing von Bulow, and in fact "fought off playing him for a while, because he was alive and I thought there was something tasteless about pretending to be someone who was still alive. And so I fought against it. Finally it was Glenn Close who persuaded me. She said, 'If you don't play him someone else will play him. You know, come on. Have a crack at it. It's interesting.'"

Close was right: the performance earned him the Oscar for Best Actor.

Credit: Warner Brothers

In Steven Soderbergh's 1991 "Kafka," Jeremy Irons plays Mr. Kafka, in a mystery-thriller that conflates the life story of the author and his haunting fictions.

David Cronenberg directed the film version of David Henry Hwang's play "M. Buttewrfly" (1993), about a French diplomat's years-long relationship with a Chinese opera performer, unaware that the object of his infatuation is a male. Jeremy Irons and John Lone starred.

Credit: Warner Brothers

Jeremy Irons and Meryl Streep appeared together again on-screen in the 1993 film of Isabel Allende's "The House of the Spirits."

Credit: Miramax

Jeremy Irons provided the sinister voice of the villainous Scar in the 1994 animated film, "The Lion King."

Credit: Walt Disney Pictures

Irons' vocal talents were again tapped in 2012, for the TV series "The Simpsons," playing a piece of cloth telling a Shakespearean epic of tragedy and pathos, as he recounts his journey from medieval tapestry to bar rag, in "Moe Goes from Rags to Riches."

Credit: Gracie Films

Jeremy Irons starred in Wayne Wang's "Chinese Box" (1997), a multi-story film set at the time of Hong Kong's handover to China. It also starred Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Ruben Blades and Jared Harris.

Credit: Trimark Pictures

Jeremy Irons starred as Humbert Humbert in the 1997 remake of Vladimir Nabokov's "Lolita," featuring Dominique Swain as his young object of lust.

Credit: Samuel Goldwyn Pictures

The aging Musketeers -- Athos (John Malkovich), Porthos (Gerard Depardieu), D'Artagnan (Gabriel Byrne) and Aramis (Jeremy Irons) -- are featured in the 1998 adventure film "The Man in the Iron Mask," adapted from Alexandre Dumas' stories.

Credit: United Artists

Fanny Ardant starred as the fading opera singer Maria Callas, with Jeremy Irons as her former manager, in the biopic "Callas Forever" (2002), directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

Credit: Regent Releasing

Jeremy Irons played the husband of a stage actress (Annette Bening) in the 2004 drama "Being Julia."

Jeremy Irons and Joseph Fiennes in the 2004 film of "The Merchant of Venice."

Credit: Sony Pictures Classics

Jeremy Irons and director David Lynch on the set of Lynch's "Inland Empire" (2006).

Credit: 518 Media

Actor Jeremy Irons poses with his Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Series, Mini-Series or TV Movie for "Elizabeth I," January 15, 2007, at the 64th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Credit: GABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images

Actors Jeremy Irons and Helen Mirren pose in the press room during the 13th Annual Screen Actors Guild Awards held at the Shrine Auditorium on January 28, 2007 in Los Angeles, Calif. Irons and Mirren both won for their performances in "Elizabeth I."

Credit: Vince Bucci/Getty Images

Jeremy Irons played a New Mexico rancher terrorizing the community in "Appaloosa" (2008), a western also starring Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson.

Credit: New Line Cinema

Photographer Sam Irons, the son of Jeremy Irons and Sinead Cusack, poses with his parents on May 24, 2007, at an exhibit of photographs of the security wall between Israel and Palestine, in Dublin, Ireland. The exhibition, hosted at the Monster Truck Gallery, was entitled "WALL."

Credit: ShowBizIreland/Getty Images

In J.C. Chandor's 2011 drama "Margin Call," Jeremy Irons played John Tuld, the CEO and Chairman of the Board of a financial institution who learns of an impending crisis that could take his company down.

Credit: Lionsgate

Jeremy Irons stars as Pope Alexander VI, a man of many passions, in the TV series "The Borgias."

Credit: Showtime

Irons plays Rodrigo Borgia, the shrewd and scheming clergyman who became pope, and who also enjoys the carnal pleasures of life, in "The Borgias."

"He is a complex character," Irons told CBS News. "Any pope with 12 children would be."

Credit: Showtime

Actors Bradley Cooper, Zoe Saldana and Jeremy Irons arrive at the premiere of CBS Films' "The Words" at the Arclight Theatre on September 4, 2012 in Los Angeles.

Credit: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

For "The Words," Irons was aged 25 years to play a man who confronts a young author (played by Bradley Cooper) about a stolen manuscript.

"It's so nice to need to be aged still," Irons joked on "CBS This Morning." "Days will come when I won't have to be aged any longer."

Credit: CBS News

Actor Jeremy Irons poses for photographers as he arrives on the red carpet prior to the screening of the film "Night Train to Lisbon," presented at the 63rd Berlin International Film Festival in Berlin on February 13, 2013.

Credit: JOHN MACDOUGALL/AFP/Getty Images

Actor Jeremy Irons speaks during a press conference on waste plastic treatment on March 7, 2013 at the EU Headquarters in Brussels. Irons has produced a documentary, "Trashed," about the effects of waste on the environment and public health, and said that Europe should lead the world in reducing and recycling waste.
"Let them see country by country, how much [progress] can be made, how the economy can be helped by serious recycling," Irons told Euronews. "You bet your life the others will come on board.

"But let's not just sit here and wait and say, 'It's no good if we do anything because what about China and India?' That's not the way to live."

Credit: GEORGES GOBET/AFP/Getty Images)

Irons recently produced a new documentary about recycling, titled "Trashed," which shows the terrifying possibility of a future world buried in its own garbage.

"I wanted to make a documentary about something which I thought was important and which was curable," he told CBS News' Tracy Smith. "It's not rocket science."